Son of Rapture Prelude
by Keeper of War
Summary: Zacharia, the father of Henry, tells of his escape from Rapture, and the beginning of his Son's attempt at controlling humanity.


Son of Rapture - Prelude

Summary: Zachariah explains how he and his wife, Helen, left Rapture and had married, later producing a child, Henry.

How did it go so wrong? We thought we could teach him. We thought, that if it got out of hand, we could stop him. How could we not see this coming? Fire, carnage, destruction. I am sitting in an interrogation room, trying to explain how my son, Henry, is good-natured, and could never have meant to wipe out half of an entire city.

Well, I guess I should start at the beginning. Helen, my wife, worked in Rapture with me. We helped design Adam, and it's adaptation to the human physiology. We didn't see at the time how it would damage society. I guess we never heard the idea of power corrupting. We designed and created a majority of the plasmid that granted superhuman powers. Therefore, naturally, we were some of the first to inject ourselves with the finished product.

We tried to fool ourselves into thinking it was for security. Sure, things were getting restless in Rapture. Sure, there were dangers; Big Daddies, lunatic experiments, madmen scientists, but nothing like the Rapture we left. Nothing like the rapture that Ryan died in. But nothing had truly justified using that power. It was more of a way of physically manifesting our creation, our power. Eventually, however, things got to a point where we needed the powers, we needed the safety.

Helen and I had been romancing for a few months. It was very serious, to the point of planning marriage. We had to plan for our future outside of Rapture, we both knew that Ryan's paradise was falling to the hands of the insane, and Helen and I needed to be ready for escaping. We knew escaping would be difficult, Ryan had reached the brink of insanity, and any citizens that were rumored to be leaving Rapture, met horrific accidents along the way. We knew the only way out would mean violence.

Helen and I sat down one night to discuss our plasmid investments. We knew that too many would eventually lead to mental instability, so we agreed to always stay together at all times, and only inject two plasmids each. We had both already injected the Telekinesis plasmid, and decided to get a balanced pair. I finally settled on the electric plasmid and the cyclone plasmid, one attack, one defense. Helen took the incinerate plasmid, and the freezing plasmid.

When we were both settled for the escape, I scheduled a meeting between Helen, myself, and Andrew Ryan. I wanted it to be a calm goodbye, maybe even a call to have him escape with us, but Ryan would have none of it. Not only did he refuse to come, to leave the, "Promised Land," but he wasn't going to let us go, either. He couldn't let us, "Take our genetic secrets to the tainted world of the corrupt."

Of course, this was the moment Helen and I had prepared for over the past few months. Granted, you can never truly prepare for the type of bloodshed that we caused. I lost count of the number of men or guards we killed or paralyzed. Ryan himself couldn't have stopped us that night, not even a Big Daddy. We had seen what this new, unloving Rapture had done to people, we couldn't let us become a victim of it.

We made it to the escape pod, and to the surface. By the time anyone made it into the pod with us, they were either bloody or dead. We met an American Aircraft carrier on the surface, and the Marines helped us out. I think the governments never went down there because they thought it would eventually kill itself out. I never had to worry about it, Uncle Sam kept sending me my monthly check for assisting her science down there in scenic Rapture. All I cared about was being out of that hellhole and starting a new life with the woman I loved. Little did I know that the effects of Rapture would never truly leave our lives.

Years went by, and Helen and I got married. Beautiful wedding, but not many people showed up. A lot of family members disapproved of our involvement in Rapture, or had forgotten that we even existed. The point is, we were on our own, and we couldn't be happier. We found a nice home in scenic El Dorado Hills, a small town just forming in Northern California, just forty-five minutes away from Sacramento.

It was in the late sixties that we began thinking of having a kid. Granted we were in our late forties, but we wanted someone to pass our stories on to. To tell our mistakes to, to tell our successes to. We found a specialist in the area, and scheduled a consult, to see if we could procreate in our advanced years. The man, Dr. Theus, said that it would be unlikely in most couples, but with our genetic splicing, our physiology had become surprisingly reinforced, almost guaranteeing a healthy pregnancy.

There was a drawback, however. Any splicing we had done, our plasmids, would have a 99.82 chance of being transferred to the child. While the doctor was concerned, Helen and I were confident enough in our knowledge to be able to teach our child to learn to control its abilities, to control his abilities.

We decided to try to have a child. On July 4, 1971, Helen bore our child, Henry. He was a beautiful baby boy, 8 pounds, 5 ounces. He grew to be a strong young man, thick, brown hair, brown eyes, six foot two inches, he was an intimidating young man of 17 when his powers manifested. Like the doctor predicted, Henry had inherited all of our powers.

Luckily, when his manifestation hit, he was outside, in the woods. The genetic code achieved full potential when he was taking a walk through the wood with me. He stumbled over the rocks as his head manifested its controls over the different elements it now possessed. If it hadn't have been for my fast acting of my telekinesis, my ability to put up a shield, I wouldn't be telling this story today. A quarter-mile of the forest was destroyed. The trees were either burned, zapped, frozen, warped, or ripped from the ground. In the end, he was crumpled on the ground, smoke and frost trailing from his back.

I had to take him home, and Helen and I told him the story of Rapture. Granted it was a lot to take, and we had to present evidence to get him to believe some parts, but we eventually convinced him of the truth. We expected the worst; bad grades, fights at school, even poor behavior at home. Anything to express aggravation in this hand that had been dealt to him. On the contrary; his grades were the best they'd been in years, he began making many new friends, and his attitude at home was ideal.

However, it soon took a turn for the worse. He often brought up talks of being given power for a reason, us being better than humanity, that we shouldn't even be called human. We were the new superiors. He brought up lectures of Adolf Hitler, of horrific dictators, and called us their dream. He called us, Homo Ultimum. The culmination of the evolutionary ladder.

I tried to calm him down with talks of civic duty, of personal responsibility. I told him that only Andrew Ryan spoke of such things, and that this was why we left Rapture. Helen and I saw what was happening. Henry did not get to see what became of Rapture, he did not see the consequences to such thinking. All he saw was the power. All he saw was opportunity. I knew it couldn't end well when he ran away from home.

We had an argument of sorts, him trying to convince me of our superiority, and myself trying to talk him down. He finally just ran out the door in a blur of flame and sparks. It wasn't until three days later when I got a phone call. All I heard was my son say, "City Hall in Folsom, then you'll see, father." The line clicked dead and I sped over with Helen in the car.

He was speaking in front of a crowd, telling of Rapture and speaking of the culmination of humanity's evolution when I arrived. As I got out he was speaking of a demonstration. He looked at me and winked as he raised his hands over his head. That's when all Hell broke loose.

The sky exploded in lightning as a radius of flame exploded from him. I'm sure he meant it purely as a demonstration, but he did not have the experience to keep it from harming people. The ground caught fire as frost spread above it, freezing and flaming innocent people, and sudden blasts of telekinesis throwing them about. I was trying to stop him when I was thrown to the ground, knocked unconscious.

I awoke to the smell of burning flesh, and looked into the eyes of a police officer. They positively identified me as Henry's father, and led me to this room from where I give this story.

I will now be forced to tell the police everything, about Rapture, about Ryan, about my son, about Helen and I. But in the end, they will not be able to do anything. I know they won't. If bullets could not stop Helen and I from escaping Rapture, how could they stop Henry from his conquest over his inferiors? How could anyone stop him?

Anyone but me.

Anyone but his own father.

Only I can stop my son.

But I am not ready to.

I am not sure I ever will be.

[End of Prelude


End file.
